The water covenant

Travancore, Malabar Coast, 1900. A twelve-year-old girl tries to sleep in her mother's arms. Tomorrow she will leave the home where she grew up to marry the man to whom she was promised. The man who will be her husband, the new master of her life, is thirty years older, a widower, with a young son. The young bride goes to meet her future as decided by others, just as her mother and her mother's mother did before her. "A girl's worst day is her wedding day. After that, God willing, things get better," they tell her. The widower is a good match, for like her, he is part of the ancient Christian community, but it is difficult to understand why he accepted a wife without a dowry, despite rumors that his family is afflicted by a strange condition: in each generation, at least one person dies by drowning. And in what is today called Kerala, water is everywhere, shaping the land into a network of lakes and lagoons, accompanying lives with its soft song, feeding on the monsoons, connecting everything in time and space. The bride is welcomed with affection and, in the course of her long and extraordinary life, knows the joy of a great love, suffers the pain of endless losses, and witnesses significant changes. Her family will expand and contract with births and deaths. Until the arrival of a granddaughter who will receive her name, study medicine, and make a shocking discovery.